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Жертвы времени: жизнь и судьба иранских политических деятелей и трудовых мигрантов в межвоенный период
“Victims of Their Faith,” by Dr. Touraj Atabaki and Dr. Lana Ravandi-Fadai, explores the fates of
the first generation of Iranian communists in the Soviet Union, many of whom made significant contributions
to the development of Soviet Iranian studies and were later engulfed in a dark period of
Soviet history that touched on all republics and ethnicities within the Soviet Union — the Stalinist
repressions of the 1930s. The authors bring to bear original research from archives in Russia, Iran,
Azerbaijan and other countries to reconstruct the histories of these political activists, revolutionaries
and scholars. Soviet case files and investigatory materials are examined here for the first time,
providing new insights and correctives to previous studies. Forces and pressures at work during this
troubled time render the application of accustomed categories of behavior problematic. Many of the
subjects of this study were well aware of the stakes and prepared to sacrifice themselves for a future
good in which they fervently believed. Taking into account the larger historical canvas, the book situates
these individuals in the context of the early communist movement in Iran and demonstrates
how the evolving socio-political atmosphere in the Soviet Union during the decades prior to World
War II first enabled the Iranian communists, especially within the burgeoning school of “Red Orientalism,”
and then led to their destruction, imprisonment, and marginalization.